Nikon D4 photo samples

The D4 delivers excellent photo quality, with clean JPEGs through ISO 1600 and very good raw images through ISO 12800.

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Low ISO sensitivity JPEGs

The D4's JPEGs look clean as high as ISO 1600, are decent at ISO 3200 -- you can start to see some detail degradation -- and usable at ISO 6400, depending upon content. But rather disappointingly, the artifact profile for JPEGs doesn't look quite as good as the D3S' at sensitivities below ISO 12800.

High ISO sensitivity JPEGs

Although better by the numbers than the D3S's JPEGs at ISO 12800 and above, I wouldn't suggest using the JPEGs beyond ISO 6400. On the upside, shooting raw yields significantly better shots at high sensitivities.

ISO 12800 JPEG

As I occasionally photograph feral cats, many of which only come out after sundown and who shy away from flash, good high ISO sensitivity performance is becoming increasingly important to me. So I wish the noise processing for ISO 12800 JPEGs were a little better; Nikon tends to err on the side of color noise over luminance noise. It looks fine viewed at 50 percent or smaller, though.

Shadow recovery

Before updating the firmware I had a big problem with the SB910 flash not firing, and ended up with several shots significantly underexposed shots (inset original). There's sufficient latitude in the raw files, however, to recover the image without introducing much noise and maintaining a lot of detail. Of course, it's not nearly as sharp as it would otherwise have been. But hey, you can't have everything.

Picture Controls

The default Picture Control saturates hues a little, but doesn't push them into shifting. However, if you plan to shoot with it, you might want to push the contrast down a bit, as it can lose a fair bit of shadow detail. If you choose to shoot Neutral, you might want to bump up the sharpness a bit, though.

Auto White Balance options

As is becoming common these days, the D4 offers two different auto white balance settings, one option that balances for a "neutral" white (AWB1), and one that balances to preserve the color of a white illuminated by the predominant light source (AWB2). I like the capability and the results, but I wish there were a quicker way to jump between the two settings -- you have to choose which type of balance you want within the menus rather than as a white balance option you cycle through.

Continuous shooting

As you'd expect, the D4 bursts crazy fast, even shooting full-resolution, minimally compressed raw+JPEG. You can see that it's fast enough to catch the bubble bursting in these two sequential photos.

I was shooting underexposed to guarantee I wouldn't lose the highlights and colors of the bubbles, which turned out to be too dark as the light was dropping rapidly. So I boosted the exposure back in the raws. These are partial crops to highlight the bubble.

Autofocus while panning

This is from the middle of a 17-shot burst. Overall, I found the center-point, continuous AF more reliable than the other myriad options, because I could never be sure if they'd get distracted by the background. I'm a mediocre panner at best and I found about 50 percent of my shots acceptably focused, so in the hands of a more frequent panner I'd expect a significantly higher percentage of good ones.

Multiple exposure

Nikon has a nice, if initially confusing, multiple-exposure implementation. For instance, it can produce a raw file; that came in really handy here, since I'd accidentally left a negative exposure-compensation setting on from some previous shots.

Sharpness

Overall, I found the camera lacked the naturalistic sharpness of a model like the D800, even at higher apertures and faster shutter speeds, but it can resolve midrange-distance details as well as you'd expect for the money.